Chapter 4: Auditory Perception

The auditory system is not simple. Underlying the awareness of rhythmic sounds are basic perceptual laws that govern the recognition of auditory boundaries, events, and successions. Research into the mechanisms of perception sheds light on the physical cues that inspire rhythmic patterns in the mind of the listener. These cues help distinguish features of the sound that are properties of the signal from those that are properties of the perceiving mind. The beat is not in the signal; it is in your mind.

4.1  How the Ear Works 4.1.1  Perception of Loudness 4.1.2  Critical Band and JND 4.1.3  Models of the Auditory System 4.2  Auditory Boundaries 4.3  Regular Successions 4.3.1  Perceptions of Rate 4.3.2  Regular Successions as a Single Perception 4.3.3  Perceptual Cues for Clustering of Notes 4.3.4  Perceptual Cues for Clustering of Rhythms 4.3.5  Filled vs. Empty Durations 4.3.6  Framework for Rhythm Perception 4.3.7  A Rhythmic Theory of Perception 4.3.8  Rhythm Without Notes 4.3.9  Changes to Regular Successions 4.3.10  Multiple Regular Successions 4.3.11  One-Hundred Metronomes 4.4  Feature vectors: Perceptually Motivated Preprocessing 4.4.1  Critical Band Feature Vectors 4.4.2  Listening to Feature Vectors I 4.4.3  Extracting Auditory Boundaries from a Signal 4.4.4  Listening to Feature Vectors II 4.5  Perception vs. Reality